About Me

Known principally for his weekly political columns and his commentaries on radio and television, Chris Trotter has spent most of his adult life either engaging in or writing about politics. He was the founding editor of The New Zealand Political Review (1992-2005) and in 2007 authored No Left Turn, a political history of New Zealand. Living in Auckland with his wife and daughter, Chris describes himself as an “Old New Zealander” – i.e. someone who remembers what the country was like before Rogernomics. He has created this blog as an archive for his published work and an outlet for his more elegiac musings. It takes its name from Bowalley Road, which runs past the North Otago farm where he spent the first nine years of his life. Enjoy.

Bowalley Road Rules

The blogosphere tends to be a very noisy, and all-too-often a very abusive, place. I intend Bowalley Road to be a much quieter, and certainly a more respectful, place.So, if you wish your comments to survive the moderation process, you will have to follow the Bowalley Road Rules.These are based on two very simple principles:Courtesy and Respect.Comments which are defamatory, vituperative, snide or hurtful will be removed, and the commentators responsible permanently banned.Anonymous comments will not be published. Real names are preferred. If this is not possible, however, commentators are asked to use a consistent pseudonym.Comments which are thoughtful, witty, creative and stimulating will be most welcome, becoming a permanent part of the Bowalley Road discourse.However, I do add this warning. If the blog seems in danger of being over-run by the usual far-Right suspects, I reserve the right to simply disable the Comments function, and will keep it that way until the perpetrators find somewhere more appropriate to vent their collective spleen.

Followers

Friday, 10 August 2018

How The New Zealand Left Transformed Southern And Molyneux From Unknown Rightists Into Free Speech Heroes.

From Right-Wing Moles To Free Speech Mountains: Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux were confident that all they needed to do to spread their ideas in New Zealand was announce their intention of staging an event. The Left could be relied upon to do the rest.

WHAT A PITY there is no “Politburo” of the New Zealand Left.
A central committee of knowledgeable and experienced left-wing strategists and
organisers who could make decisions on behalf of the wider progressive
movement. Had such a body existed when the news of the impending visit of
Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux broke, then what happened next would have
been very different.

The Politburo would have perused the available information
on the Canadian duo and very quickly realised that the best course of action
for the New Zealand Left was to do absolutely nothing. No media releases. No
posters. No protests. Certainly no threats to disrupt the speakers’ public
meetings. In response to Southern and Molyneux, the New Zealand Left would do
precisely zero, zip, nada, nothing.

Why? Because even a cursory glance at Southern’s and
Molyneux’s modus operandi would have
alerted the Politburo to the fact that protests and threats of disruption were
absolutely indispensable to the success of the pair’s political touring.

Without the threats of disruption from Peace Action
Auckland, the Auckland Council would have had no grounds for denying Southern
and Molyneux access to the Bruce Mason Theatre in Takapuna (along with every
other council venue in Auckland!) on health and safety grounds. The meeting
would have taken place and, if the Canadians were lucky, they might have
merited a few brief paragraphs in the NZ
Herald. Most Kiwis would have remained blissfully unaware that Lauren
Southern and Stefan Molyneux even existed.

If provocateurs fail to provoke, do they make any sound at
all?

We’ll never know. Because, of course, the New Zealand Left
does not have a Politburo to provide it with sagacious strategic advice. It is
a wild, anarchic melange of individuals and groups, united only by the fierce
conviction that all those who challenge the phantasmagoria of sectional
sensitivities which constitute the contemporary “progressive” movement must ipso facto be fascists whose every
public utterance, being “hate speech”, must be suppressed – by any means
necessary.

Knowing this, Southern and Molyneux would have been
confident that all they needed to do to spread their ideas in New Zealand was
announce their intention to hold a meeting. The Left could be relied upon to do
the rest.

That the Canadians’ first infusion of power came from the
Mayor of New Zealand’s largest city must, however, have struck them as more
than usually fortuitous. Phil Goff’s naked assertion of the right to determine
what the citizens of Auckland could and could not hear was bound to rouse the
defenders of free expression to action. Better and better! Southern and
Molyneux could now count on tens-of-thousands of New Zealanders googling their
names and watching their YouTube channels.

The next step was to begin the game of “will they or won’t
they be able to secure a private venue?”. With social media crackling with
ideological thrust and counter-thrust and “anti-fascist” coalitions being
announced, the next phase of the propaganda operation was ready to unfold.

It was a phase Southern and Molyneux could hardly lose.
Either the secured venue would stand firm against the inevitable threats and
the meeting would go ahead. Or, the venue’s owners would be subjected to such
intolerable pressure that the meeting was cancelled. If the former eventuated,
then it would inevitably attract hundreds, if not thousands, of screaming
left-wing protesters. If it was cancelled, the Canadians could present
themselves as the victims of left-wing intimidation. Either way, the mainstream
news media would feel obligated to step into the story.

Which, with the Powerstation’s decision to first hire out,
and then deny, its facilities to the duo, is exactly what happened.

Had the proposed meeting at the Bruce Mason Theatre gone
ahead without incident, Southern and Molyneux would have been able to preach
to, at most, 800 already converted enthusiasts. As they wing their way back to
Canada, however, they will be congratulating themselves on being presented to the
tens-of-thousands of Kiwis watching the television current affairs programme
“Sunday” in prime-time.

Many socially-conservative New Zealanders, seeing the
Canadians for the first time, will doubtless have wondered how anyone could be
offended by two such telegenic and articulate individuals. The stridency of
their opponents, by contrast, must have appeared strange – even slightly
sinister.

Had it ever been the intention of the Left and its kindred
souls in the Human Rights Commission to extend and strengthen New Zealand’s
laws against “hate speech”, then its fruitless attempts to suppress the views
of Southern and Molyneux can only have rendered such an exercise significantly
more difficult.

The debate stirred up by the repeated denial of both public
and private stages to the pair on account of threats and intimidation has
placed the issue of free speech squarely on New Zealand’s political agenda. The
Left will find it much harder, now, to sell its arguments in favour of limiting
New Zealanders right to free expression that would have been the case if
Southern and Molyneux had simply been allowed to come and go without incident.

The Powerstation, Auckland, graffitied.

The person who sprayed graffiti on the Powerstation’s walls
over the weekend described Southern’s and Molyneux’s foray into New Zealand
politics as the “FREE SPEECH - EULOGY TOUR”. Given that eulogies are only
pronounced over the dead, the graffitist is clearly someone who believes the
Left has either already killed free speech, or is intending to do so in the
near future.

He, or she, is wrong on both counts.

This essay was
originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Tuesday, 7 August 2018.

14 comments:

This free speech thing is fine but surely there is a limit? The extreme is shouting fire in a packed theatre and the mildest is that you don’t like whatever. There are many free speech statements in between that if allowed to be repeated can, over time, cause a lot of damage. People are easily led and influenced as history and politics has shown and is showing.

PatriciaThat misquote, and a partial one at that, shows that people don't think through the implications of it. Here is the history of that casehttps://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/I think Chris (the blog host) has made some very valid points that society needs to take a big think about.

The appropriate limits are direct and credible threats of, or incitements to, violence and speech, such as in the packed theatre example, that is likely to endanger people in the immediate term. Anything beyond that becomes all too easy to use for the purposes of political censorship and also runs a risk of inhibiting people from formulating and debating ideas. The fact that some people will abuse free speech for the purpose of hurting others is a price we have to pay for a free society. The redress for that is for people of goodwill to robustly defend the targets of that abuse whenever it occurs.

the best course of action for the New Zealand Left was to do absolutely nothing. No media releases. No posters. No protests. Certainly no threats to disrupt the speakers’ public meetings. In response to Southern and Molyneux, the New Zealand Left would do precisely zero, zip, nada, nothing.......That was Colin Peacocks message on Mediawatch Hmmmmm!??? (of course correlation doesn't equal causality).

The internet has done it's own Mediawatchhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGSfHIPnupY&t=335s

The MediaWorks Standards Committee is responsible for considering formal complaints about MediaWorks’ online news content, and deciding whether or not it complied with the Principles set out by the New Zealand Media Council.

Your complaint relates to a video created by a third-party and published by Youtube. MediaWorks is only required to consider complaints about content published by MediaWorks. Therefore, we are not required to accept your complaint.

[actually that's not true I complain about the original content accurately portrayed by modern technology]

In any event, we are satisfied that The Project material you referred to in your complaint complied with the Media Council’s Principle of Accuracy, Fairness and Balance.

Discussing Canadian right-wing personality Lauren Southern’s attempts to prevent a refugee ship from docking in Sicily, presenter Jesse Mulligan stated:“She says that women and children would be better to die than come into Europe”.

The Committee has determined that Mr Mulligan did not quote something Ms Southern had actually said, but rather inferred her views from her actions. Having considered Ms Southern’s actions, we are satisfied that Mr Mulligan's characterisation of her views was accurate.

As a graduate many years ago, my observation is that authority is earned, not gifted because you passed an exam. People who front issues others are scared to address become authorities by default as the sheep run away. Academics hide behind robes, activists avoid unsafe spaces, Southern faces the issues. She becomes the authority on unicorns because she is the only person to see one.

These people court controversy. It's the way they make their living. Without it you don't get those idiots clicking on your YouTube channel. Well, not in politics anyway. And they would have found a way to get themselves in the papers and other media, because the actual job of the media is to make money rather than inform the public, and they would have lapped it up one way or another. It would have been nice of the media to ignore them, but if it gets clicks they can't do it.

"The Left will find it much harder, now, to sell its arguments in favour of limiting New Zealanders right to free expression"The problem with the left is that it can't see through all of its 'good intentions' to realise the honest truth that they're blindly skipping & dancing down a dark Orwellian path of their own making.multiculturalism has become a deity to the left; to question it brings forth the sort of visceral reaction one would associate with members of a religious cult, & in a sense multiculturalism is a cult.As evidenced in Paddy Gower's 3rd rate interview attempts, the cult followers of the left have chanted the mantras for so long, that they're incapable of understanding the difference between the concepts of a multiracial society, & a multcultural one.To see the results of making any discussion of multi culturalism 'Haram,' we only need to look at the push of Salafist groups in the UK, who describe female genital mutilation as a "good & honourable practice", of forced child marriages, sharia courts within some communities & of course grooming gangs.Ordinary NZers have actually been done a good service by our local social Marxists. They've been able to see them on the news as the screaming self deluded crazies that they actually all are; it's been a good wake up call, & that these same cult members of social Marxism wish "to sell its arguments in favour of limiting New Zealanders right to free expression" should be very alarming to ordinary NZers indeed.

From the horses mouth:“…[racists] are an infinitesimal percentage of people and they’re only made important because the left media gives them a microphone.” Steve Bannon recently in a ‘Four Corners’ interview on ABC